News and Events

While working this summer to strengthen opportunities for Massachusetts women in politics, Kelsey Barowich (MPP ’16) is learning a vital lesson: Just because work is important does not necessarily mean it is also glamorous.

Building on the success of the Center for Public Policy and Administration, the founding director will be in a unique position to lead a faculty hiring strategy, to make the SPP a national and international hub for policy debates, and to create multidisciplinary programs that prepare students for life-long engagement with public issues.

Alex Calder, recent graduate of the resource economics department and his fellow UMass roommate Jeff Rogers summited Alaska’s Mount McKinley, located in the Denali National Park and Preserve, this past May. Only 50% of climbers who attempt the climb ever make it to Denali’s summit.

“UMass is a part of my family,” remarks Morzuch. “My father teaches resource economics on campus and my mother, two sisters and husband are all alumni. UMass has framed who I am today and so I give back to it in any way that I can.”

“Suddenly we have 150,000 same-sex couples [in the 13 states] that can get married. That has the potential for quite a big economic boost. Bakers, hotels, people who make fancy clothing for people – those are all the types of businesses that will benefit from this ruling, and those are small businesses”

A new study presented today by scholars at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Texas at Austin, reports that online daters often prefer mixed-race over mono-racial individuals, challenging the common belief that people with a white parent and a parent of a different racial-ethnic group, especially ones with a black parent, are always treated as “minorities.”

“I’m so grateful to the Bacherman family for even considering me for this scholarship,” says Haley Bucelewicz ’16 (communication/journalism), recipient of the Scott J. Bacherman Scholarship. “While my internship at WCVB is an amazing opportunity, it’s unfortunately unpaid and takes up most of the time I would otherwise have working a paid job. Without this scholarship, I would not have been able to intern at WCVB. This scholarship means so much to me."

Assistant Professor David Mednicoff (public policy) visited the largest refugee camp in Jordan on June 6, as part of a delegation affiliated with iPlatform for Global Change, an organization he helps lead. As a result of this visit, this international nongovernmental organization is now working to further the educational opportunities for youth in the Za’atari camp, located less than 20 miles south of the Syrian border.